Telecommunications is an important part of everyday life. Examples of telecommunication systems are telephone systems, telegraph systems, radio broadcast systems, televisions systems, and cellular telephone systems. Since the advent of the first telecommunication system, telecommunication systems have improved the quality of life in many respects. Because of telecommunication systems, businesses can be conducted more efficiently and geographically separated family members can talk to each other on telephones.
Datacom is also an important part of everyday activity. It fosters communication between devices such as computers over various distances. In networking applications, many high speed applications may be aggregated, resulting in the need for very high speed digital communication.
Many telecommunication and datacom systems use fiber optics to send information from one place to another at a high speed. This high speed communication over fiber optics is beneficial, as a large capacity of communication can be handled by a single optical fiber. For example, a single optic fiber is capable of carrying thousands of telephone conversations at the same time. Even over short distances, high-speed serial communications are often used, resulting in the need for high-speed signaling requiring low jitter performance.
Throughout the development of optic fiber communications, engineers have attempted to increase the capacity of a single optical fiber. When attempting to increase the capacity of an optical fiber communication system, many factors can limit the speed at which information can be communicated. Aside from limitations of optical fiber, other communication components can limit the communication capability of the optical fiber. In general, an optical communication system may include components such as optical fiber, transmitters, receivers, amplifiers, couplers, splitters, and other devices or materials.
Often times, an optical communication system or a non-optical communications system is limited by a phenomenon called jitter. Jitter occurs when there is a timing looseness introduced by the components of a communication system. In order to minimize this jitter problem, it is useful to be able to detect the amount of jitter present in a communication component or system. Further, it is desirable to be able to detect jitter in a communication component or system in an efficient and cost effective manner. A related problem is known as ‘wander.’ Wander is jitter at relatively low frequencies.